Banbury-headquartered First Line Ltd, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of premium quality automotive components to the vehicle aftermarket, has secured £20 million in funding from Santander Corporate & Commercial. The funding will help the firm expand its exports and capitalise on growth opportunities in overseas markets, it states.
Prometeon Tyre Group has arranged an inaugural 600 million euros of credit facilities consisting of 450 million euros of term facility and a 150 million euros of revolving facility. The new credit facilities mature on March 2020, with two one-year extension options. According to Prometeon, the credit facilities secure the firm’s “financial independence and autonomy following its separation from the Pirelli Group and optimise the company’s capital structure”.
Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, has given the green light to 5*StarS as part of the national strategy to establish the UK as a global centre for the development, testing and commercialisation of Connected Autonomous Vehicles.
Pneusmart, the Amsterdam-headquartered online tyre dealer, has secured seed funding of 765,000 euros led by Shark Bites, Digital Magics and a group of international angel investors.
According to the company, the funds will be used to consolidate Pneusmart’s position in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. The company will further invest in its Milan office from where it will coordinate its activities in Southern Europe. In the coming months new websites will be launched in Spain and France.
Councils across the country have won nearly £21 million of funding from the government to promote green forms of transport, it was announced recently. The funding is being given out for 23 sustainable travel initiatives across England that boost local economies by supporting people’s ambitions – offering cheap, clean and healthy travel options to access […]
The government has launched a £2 million fund to encourage more businesses to switch to hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. The Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Fleet Support Scheme will allow local authorities, health trusts, police forces, fire brigades and private companies to bid for funding to add hydrogen-powered vehicles to their fleets. Bids for the FCEV Fleet Support Scheme must be submitted by Monday 4 July 2016. Successful bidders will be informed later this year.
The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is to invest £200,000 in the first stage of four-month project which aims to develope smart tyre pressure system (commonly called TPMS) at MIRA. According to the two parties, the project aims to help increase the fuel efficiency and reduce emissions of all heavy duty land vehicles that use pneumatic tyres.
The Government has released details of how a £50m pothole fund is to be divided up between English councils. The cash will be split among 118 authorities. Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said the government wanted to “tackle the blight of potholes”. Devon council is to receive the most cash. The Local Government Association says it will take £12bn to fix the roads.
A consortium, led by Thurso-based AGM Batteries, has been awarded funding towards a £5.4 million project to develop the next generation of battery packs for high performance, low carbon vehicles.
A consortium initiated by Tructyre has won £1.2 million of funding for its “Pathway to Autonomous Commercial Vehicles” project. This project aims to develop “an innovative solution to monitor key information from the vehicle and predict safety risks based on analytics”. It builds on a prototype which monitors tyre pressures and temperatures in commercial vehicles, combined with always-on network connection.
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) says it is extremely disappointed that, once again, the Chancellor has failed to address the urgent need for £150 million to fund truck driver training, and it considers the omission to be a threat to economic recovery.
The Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) has announced an £11 million investment towards the development of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure in the UK. The investment will see the UK’s hydrogen infrastructure grow to up to 15 refuelling stations nationwide, and is part of government’s drive to make the UK a global leader in ultra-low emission vehicles. Joint-funded by government and industry, the project will allocate funds to: install and run up to seven new customer-facing hydrogen refuelling stations (£7 million); upgrade existing hydrogen refuelling stations (£2 million); and to acquire around 40 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles for the public sector (£2 million). The announcement was made by Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, Matthew Hancock MP, while visiting Honda, Nissan and Toyota in Japan.
Council chiefs have warned that the country is facing a roads crisis that is escalating at an “alarming pace” after new research put the cost of bringing highways up to a decent standard at over £12bn.
The Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey from the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) shows that councils fixed just over 2m potholes in England and Wales last year, yet record rainfall meant the overall conditions of local roads deteriorated again.
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